Burn Notice: "Lesser Evil" Review

Michael and Victor team up to bust some heads.

"Lesser Evil" packed quite a punch. It was definitely the most action-filled episode that we've seen in a long while - complete with enough shootouts, car chases and explosions to rattle our cages. It gets some solid points for intensity, but loses a few for almost jazzing up the action a bit too much. It's a little hard to explain, but I'm not a fan of action sequences that are accompanied by actual rock/pop songs. It's a little too Knight Rider for me and I just shed that show two days back. I would have loved to see a lot of these scenes play out with just some incidental theme music. Putting an actual song to the proceedings makes it feel more like a Burn Notice commercial and less like an episode. And, although this show is "fun," the song does actually take away some of the intensity and suspense that might accompany some of those scenes - just for the sake of making them "cooler."

That being said, I loved the "krack-bang" of Fiona's (Gabrielle Anwar) rifle shot that killed Carla (Tricia Helfer.) Great moment. And just when I was actually starting to buy into Carla's character a bit more. She was literally about to kill Michael (Jeffrey Donovan) and Victor (Michael Shanks) with a C-4 bomb, which is a maniacal move that, up until this point, we'd only heard she was capable of. Yes, we'd heard a ton about how ruthless Carla could be, but we'd never actually witnessed any of it. It had a dampening effect on her character I think. The revelation in this episode was that, years back Carla actually secretly killed Victor's wife and son just to get him to into "rock bottom" type mentality where he would want to actually join up with her. That's a really cold move for someone that we've seen very little of. And when we do see her, she looks more like a perturbed fashion plate than a malicious assassin.

If you ever wanted to know what Carla's original plan was; meaning the sniper rifle, and all the jazz - then this wasn't the ender you were looking for. That op was buried when Victor decided to take down Carla's operation from within. Of course, it isn't Carla's operation, is it? There's always a name behind the name. When Carla suspects that Michael is hiding Victor from her she panics, in fear of her own boss, and orders a hit on Madeline (Sharon Gless) and for both Michael and Victor to be killed.

That was pretty much the crux of this episode; avoiding death. And it was awesome, but a little uneven as well. I enjoyed the newfound sympathy for Victor, but after we found out his back-story, and even got a glimpse of family photos, we still had to put up with him being sort of a sarcastic tool. It was a little jarring having to go back and forth between caring about someone and wishing they'd shut their yap. Victor does wind up having a great and unexpected end though. Not that his death seemed out of nowhere, because we could all see it coming really. No, it was Michael's choice, at Victor's behest, to shoot a wounded Victor dead in order to play "the hero" to Carla's boss that was te shocker. It was almost an L.A. Confidential-style cover up and it was really a grand sacrifice from Victor. He was allowing Michael to use his death to get out from under the thumb of the organization. And it was an unexpectedly touching scene.

And now...in flies "Management," which is all the caption reads for this new "boss man" played by John Mahoney. After a conversation in a helicopter, Michael decides takes Mahoney's offer to leave, by jumping out into the ocean - even with a caveat from Mahoney that it was the organization that was keeping Michael safe from his international enemies. It will be interesting to see if this is totally the end the Organization storyline. Seeing as how Michael is still "Burned" and has met the man who "Burned" him, we might just be able to continue on from here without backpedalling too much. I still hope Michael comes to terms with the fact that he shouldn't want to leave his friends and family behind and return to his old life of solitude. "I want you people out of my life," Michael tells Mahoney. Notice that he didn't say "I want my old life back." And with that, I hope Michael decides to embark on a new path.